bugtracker switch

From:

"Alex Hornung" <ahornung@xxxxxxxxx>

Date:

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:17:30 -0000

Hi all,
I would like to suggest a switch from roundup to redmine as our bugtracker.
I've written a perl script that does an easy migration of all the data in
roundup to redmine, keeping even the same usernames, passwords, ...
The demo containing our migrated roundup database as of yesterday can be
accessed at:
http://atun-pistolero.ath.cx:3000/
To try out the code review I think you need to login. Remember that you can
login with your usual bugs.dragonflybsd.org user/password. Note that it's
hosted on my home machine and accessible via my DSL; so don't expect awesome
speed because I only have 1 Mbps upload. I also might need to reboot that
machine, so if the web page is not accessible, just retry 5 minutes later.
Now on to the important part; what it offers:
a) perfect mailing list integration such as the one we have now with
roundup. Sending a mail to a certain address will create an issue, replying
to it will add further comments. This can even be set up so different
addresses (aliases) will do different things; i.e. add to different
projects, add with a different priority or category.
b) a (subjectively) much nicer web interface, a mature and simple plugin
interface and many plugins and themes.
c) Useful tools such as Code Review (any diff, patch or even git commit can
be reviewed line by line), wiki, Download list, Repository Browser (similar
to gitweb, but well integrated into redmine), ...
d) Issues can easily closed by just referencing them with some given keyword
in commit messages; for example adding a line such as: "Fixes: #1333" to the
commit message would automatically close that issue.
e) As sjg@ mentioned on IRC, it allows for easy setup of multiple projects,
which, quoting him, "would really be ideal to setup all the individual GSoC
projects as projects with easy access to code, easy ability for people to do
reviews, submit thoughts/bugs, and provide timelines/etc."
f) *Really* trivial to setup, maintain and configure. It took me about 1
hour to have everything set up from scratch, without any prior knowledge
about postfix, etc. What took longest was writing the perl script to migrate
the database, but that's done already. I've tried out features a) to c)
rather extensively, so I know what I'm talking about.
While this may not solve our general issue of having many bugs rotting in
the bug tracker, it will at least provide a better toolset. Feature d) comes
in quite handy and I would expect it to reduce the number of issues staying
open longer than they need. It also meets the requirements of not being PHP
(ask Justin about details on this requirement) and integrating with our
mailing lists.
Redmine is highly scalable and customizable and would allow for possible
further expansion by, say, adding further projects or adding more project
management tools. Unlike roundup, it doesn't require hacking every little
bit of code just to make it look acceptable and be useful. In theory it
would even be possible to move the whole website to use redmine's wiki, as
it supports markdown, but I would like to stay away from that issue at first
and just use it as an alternative to bugs.dragonflybsd.org.
If this move is of interest to more people, which seems to be the case from
the feedback I received on IRC, I would like to see this system up and
running as soon as possible. I'm willing to do most of the setup myself, if
I'm given the access (I need to install a bunch of ruby and family
packages), but I might need some help with postfix or whatever else is being
used as a mail server, as I'm by no stretch a {sys,net}admin.
Cheers,
Alex Hornung